Opinion: California’s high fuel taxes and bad roads
By Dan Walters, Sacramento Bee
A cogent – and perhaps unanswerable – question punctuates the political machinations over raising billions of new dollars to repair California’s deteriorating highways.
How is it that California motorists are paying some of the nation’s highest fuel taxes, but the highways they use are among the nation’s worst?
Dan Walters
Including federal gas taxes, Californians are paying just under 61 cents a gallon, the fourth highest in the nation. That doesn’t include another dime a gallon in “cap-and-trade” carbon fees that, if added, would make California the highest-taxing state.
Meanwhile, data from the Federal Highway Administration place California’s highways as among the worst in physical condition.